The Saudi Dynasty, Key U.S. Ally, Tops the World in Barbarism
Posted on October 16, 2015 by Eric Zuesse.
Eric Zuesse
The richest person in the world isn’t anyone in the Forbes list, which excludes calculations for any heads-of-state, but is instead King Salman of Saudi Arabia, whose net worth is in the trillions of dollars. He virtually owns the Saudi Government, which owns the world’s largest oil company, Aramco, among other assets. Aramco alone is worth “anywhere between US$1.25 trillion[7] and US$7 trillion,[8] making it the world’s most valuable company.” The company’s website says: “1980: Saudi Arabian government acquires 100 percent participation interest in Aramco,” most of which it had already owned. The Saud family’s partners since 1933 had been Chevron Corporation, or Standard Oil of California, which built Aramco. It was a Rockefeller company then; but no one can say who controls it today. As of 2013 (see p. 56 there), the only two investors that owned more than 0.002 or .02% of Chevron, each owned around 6% of it: Blackrock, Inc., and State Street Corp., and they essentially jointly controlled that company, regarding anything on which the two agreed. But the controlling stockholder of Blackrock in 2013 was PNC Financial Services, at 20.8%. PNC is jointly controlled by Wellington Management, Blackrock and the Vanguard Group, each at more than 5%. Wellington, the main stockholder, is jointly controlled by Blackrock, Dimensional Fund Advisors, Royce & Associates, T. Rowe Price, and Wellington Management itself. Some companies, such as Wellington Management, simply hide their owners. All of this is called ‘democracy.’ (Or, at least, it’s “capitalism” of the fascist sort.)
However, King Salman’s ownership of the Saudi Government is relatively clear, since he controls the Government as his private fiefdom, and since his Government owns Aramco and other assets. Individuals such as Bill Gates, Carlos Slim, Warren Buffett, and Amancio Ortega, are each only around 1/20th to 1/50th as rich as is he. The officially-given-out figure for Salman’s personal wealth is $18 billion, but Forbes simply omits including him at all. (Bloomberg’s billionaires-list does likewise.) They don’t want to offend the richest people in the world; and heads-of-state who have become enormously wealthy from heisting an entire country prefer to keep the actual size of their heists hidden. (Furthermore, in order to pretend that the basic capitalist myth is true — that accumulation of wealth reflects mainly one’s merit instead of one’s power — they need to play down wealth that’s been accumulated by crime, or by inheritance; and head-of-state wealth tends strongly to be the product of both.)
(NOTE: In an interview published at Fort Russ on 13 October 2015, the Director of the Putin-founded Russian Institute of Strategic Studies said: “I have met people whose names you never see in the Forbes lists. But their fortunes are in the hundreds of billions. Bill Gates is a child compared to them. It is extremely difficult to fight those who are in the shadows.” Not all of them are heads-of-state. U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders has noted that, “Offshore tax haven abuse has become so absurd that one five-story office building in the Cayman Islands is now the ‘home’ to more than 18,000 corporations.” Many of those are holding-companies. The extent of wealth-concentration in the world is far higher than the publicly available data indicate.)
On October 14th, Britain’s Guardian bannered, “Saudi Arabia: Mother of Saudi man sentenced to crucifixion begs Obama to intervene,” and opened: “The mother of a Saudi protester sentenced to death by beheading and crucifixion has begged Barack Obama to intervene to save her son’s life. In her first interview with foreign media, Nusra al-Ahmed, the mother of Ali Mohammed al-Nimr, whose case has made headlines around the world, described the intended punishment as savage and ‘backwards in the extreme’. … She said her son had been detained sometime after joining Shia demonstrators in the eastern coastal city of Qatif seeking equal religious rights in the Sunni-majority country. … Visiting after his arrest, she alleged he had been tortured. ‘When I visited my son for the first time I didn’t recognise him. I didn’t know whether this really was my son Ali or not. I could clearly see a wound on his forehead. Another wound in his nose. They disfigured it. …[When] I started talking to him [he told me that] during the interrogation [he was] being kicked, slapped, of course his teeth fell out … For a month he was peeing blood. He said he felt like a mass of pain, his body was no more.’” This was/is his punishment for participating in a peaceful demonstration.
Ali Mohammed al-Nimr’s father “Mohammed al-Nimr, said his son is among eight young men facing capital punishment but insisted that he was completely innocent of the charges against him.” The father is similarly pleading for British leader David Cameron to push publicly for his son’s life to be spared. The Guardian reported the father on October 8th saying, “My son is completely innocent. He has denied all accusations against him and said so in court. My son is a peaceful man. They forced him to sign a confession for a crime he never committed.”
This is part of a global war between Sunni and Shiia political leaders. America and its vassal-states (including David Cameron’s Britain) are allied with Sunni-run nations, while Russia and its cooperating nations are allied with Shiia-run nations.
The Saudi royals are the world’s top Sunni force, and they have long been allied with the United States, against post-Shah (post-1979) Iran and all other Shiia-ruled countries, such as Syria, and such as the next-door Yemenese Shiite Houthis, who are being bombed incessantly by the hard-line Sunni Sauds using their U.S. weapons. According to the former bookkeeper of the Sunni organization Al Qaeda, the man who collected all of the financial donations to that organization, virtually all of Al Qaeda’s funding consisted of multimillion-dollar donations, mainly from the Saud family but also from other Sunni Arab royals; and their followers, the terrorists, were mercenaries in their pay, almost as much as they were true-believing fundamentalist Sunnis — they were being paid very well by their royal sponsors, to serve as a ‘volunteer’ army for jihad to bring a globalized version of the ancient Caliphate, or Sunni Empire. Such terrorism can be quite lucrative for a jihadist, even if the bigger payoff is promised to come in his afterlife.
(more)http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015...key-u-s-ally-tops-the-world-in-barbarism.html
Posted on October 16, 2015 by Eric Zuesse.
Eric Zuesse
The richest person in the world isn’t anyone in the Forbes list, which excludes calculations for any heads-of-state, but is instead King Salman of Saudi Arabia, whose net worth is in the trillions of dollars. He virtually owns the Saudi Government, which owns the world’s largest oil company, Aramco, among other assets. Aramco alone is worth “anywhere between US$1.25 trillion[7] and US$7 trillion,[8] making it the world’s most valuable company.” The company’s website says: “1980: Saudi Arabian government acquires 100 percent participation interest in Aramco,” most of which it had already owned. The Saud family’s partners since 1933 had been Chevron Corporation, or Standard Oil of California, which built Aramco. It was a Rockefeller company then; but no one can say who controls it today. As of 2013 (see p. 56 there), the only two investors that owned more than 0.002 or .02% of Chevron, each owned around 6% of it: Blackrock, Inc., and State Street Corp., and they essentially jointly controlled that company, regarding anything on which the two agreed. But the controlling stockholder of Blackrock in 2013 was PNC Financial Services, at 20.8%. PNC is jointly controlled by Wellington Management, Blackrock and the Vanguard Group, each at more than 5%. Wellington, the main stockholder, is jointly controlled by Blackrock, Dimensional Fund Advisors, Royce & Associates, T. Rowe Price, and Wellington Management itself. Some companies, such as Wellington Management, simply hide their owners. All of this is called ‘democracy.’ (Or, at least, it’s “capitalism” of the fascist sort.)
However, King Salman’s ownership of the Saudi Government is relatively clear, since he controls the Government as his private fiefdom, and since his Government owns Aramco and other assets. Individuals such as Bill Gates, Carlos Slim, Warren Buffett, and Amancio Ortega, are each only around 1/20th to 1/50th as rich as is he. The officially-given-out figure for Salman’s personal wealth is $18 billion, but Forbes simply omits including him at all. (Bloomberg’s billionaires-list does likewise.) They don’t want to offend the richest people in the world; and heads-of-state who have become enormously wealthy from heisting an entire country prefer to keep the actual size of their heists hidden. (Furthermore, in order to pretend that the basic capitalist myth is true — that accumulation of wealth reflects mainly one’s merit instead of one’s power — they need to play down wealth that’s been accumulated by crime, or by inheritance; and head-of-state wealth tends strongly to be the product of both.)
(NOTE: In an interview published at Fort Russ on 13 October 2015, the Director of the Putin-founded Russian Institute of Strategic Studies said: “I have met people whose names you never see in the Forbes lists. But their fortunes are in the hundreds of billions. Bill Gates is a child compared to them. It is extremely difficult to fight those who are in the shadows.” Not all of them are heads-of-state. U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders has noted that, “Offshore tax haven abuse has become so absurd that one five-story office building in the Cayman Islands is now the ‘home’ to more than 18,000 corporations.” Many of those are holding-companies. The extent of wealth-concentration in the world is far higher than the publicly available data indicate.)
On October 14th, Britain’s Guardian bannered, “Saudi Arabia: Mother of Saudi man sentenced to crucifixion begs Obama to intervene,” and opened: “The mother of a Saudi protester sentenced to death by beheading and crucifixion has begged Barack Obama to intervene to save her son’s life. In her first interview with foreign media, Nusra al-Ahmed, the mother of Ali Mohammed al-Nimr, whose case has made headlines around the world, described the intended punishment as savage and ‘backwards in the extreme’. … She said her son had been detained sometime after joining Shia demonstrators in the eastern coastal city of Qatif seeking equal religious rights in the Sunni-majority country. … Visiting after his arrest, she alleged he had been tortured. ‘When I visited my son for the first time I didn’t recognise him. I didn’t know whether this really was my son Ali or not. I could clearly see a wound on his forehead. Another wound in his nose. They disfigured it. …[When] I started talking to him [he told me that] during the interrogation [he was] being kicked, slapped, of course his teeth fell out … For a month he was peeing blood. He said he felt like a mass of pain, his body was no more.’” This was/is his punishment for participating in a peaceful demonstration.
Ali Mohammed al-Nimr’s father “Mohammed al-Nimr, said his son is among eight young men facing capital punishment but insisted that he was completely innocent of the charges against him.” The father is similarly pleading for British leader David Cameron to push publicly for his son’s life to be spared. The Guardian reported the father on October 8th saying, “My son is completely innocent. He has denied all accusations against him and said so in court. My son is a peaceful man. They forced him to sign a confession for a crime he never committed.”
This is part of a global war between Sunni and Shiia political leaders. America and its vassal-states (including David Cameron’s Britain) are allied with Sunni-run nations, while Russia and its cooperating nations are allied with Shiia-run nations.
The Saudi royals are the world’s top Sunni force, and they have long been allied with the United States, against post-Shah (post-1979) Iran and all other Shiia-ruled countries, such as Syria, and such as the next-door Yemenese Shiite Houthis, who are being bombed incessantly by the hard-line Sunni Sauds using their U.S. weapons. According to the former bookkeeper of the Sunni organization Al Qaeda, the man who collected all of the financial donations to that organization, virtually all of Al Qaeda’s funding consisted of multimillion-dollar donations, mainly from the Saud family but also from other Sunni Arab royals; and their followers, the terrorists, were mercenaries in their pay, almost as much as they were true-believing fundamentalist Sunnis — they were being paid very well by their royal sponsors, to serve as a ‘volunteer’ army for jihad to bring a globalized version of the ancient Caliphate, or Sunni Empire. Such terrorism can be quite lucrative for a jihadist, even if the bigger payoff is promised to come in his afterlife.
(more)http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015...key-u-s-ally-tops-the-world-in-barbarism.html
